Sleepless Nights

About a year ago, when I was sort of thrown into recovery, I had a really hard time sleeping at night. As soon as I turned off the lights, my mind switched on and my thoughts just started racing. I had tried a bunch of techniques like reading before, showers, deep breathing, and music. None of them had worked. The whole sleep issue had then become a major obstacle in my recovery because I'd be keeping semi positive and would get through the day but then once I shut my eyes all of the guilt and what ifs came zooming back. My treatment team decided to try some medication because I had also been dealing with some more anxiety than usual and it helped a lot. But eventually, once I got through that rough patch I felt like I didn't need the meds anymore and surprisingly I was able to fall asleep on my own! Lately though, as in this week, I have been having a really tough time falling asleep. But it's not for eating disorder reasons, it's for recovery reasons. My mind is keeping me up because I am so excited and hopeful about summer, getting a new job, and warmer weather/spring clothing. It's not relaxing but it's hard to see how it's a bad thing. Except when I've been laying in bed for an hour and I'm like ok... time to simmer down, I'm getting pretty exhausted. I noticed this and it stood out to me as such a positive sign that things are going well and how far I've come from last year. I'm hoping, that this week I'll be more tired and therefore fall asleep faster because I do want to be well rested and get sleep. But at least I have a lot of positive things going on right now in my life which is awesome and quite frankly I just need to embrace them but try not to get too excited about them. This past week has just been one of those weeks where I'm like "Wow my life feels together, and things are going so good and are just going to keep looking up!". Maybe it's the weather, maybe it's the hope of summer and all the fun things that come with it. All I know is that a few sleepless nights is a lot better than an eating disorder. And if these thoughts keep happening, maybe I'll need to look more into them, but for now I'm pretty content with myself, and that is a pretty damn good place to be.

Love,
Sophie Ana

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